This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.

The idea of doing a comedy is right there in the record of the facts, whether you're talking about these Yemenis who planned to blow up a US warship with an exploding boat, and got as far as putting their launch in the water and when they filled it with explosives, it sank—okay, that's a little like something from a caper.

Can't..... tthype.... llaughinhg too hbard...!!!

I can almost see how that would translate into a perfect comedy scene. Most likely the boat would be tied to a dock, and probably on just one side... so it sinks, hits the end of the ropes, and tips on its side, spilling out the explosives. With those gone, the boat would then shoot back up to the surface. So now I have this mental image of a bunch of guys peering down into the water right before the boat re-surfaces, knocking them all off the dock... or just landing on them, Loony Tunes-style.

Or, these Canadian guys who were going to assassinate the Canadian Prime Minister, until they forgot his name. The world is crying out with these examples, and after a point you can't ignore it anymore.

Which PM? If it was Chretien, then in all fairness even Dubya couldn't remember his name:

The idea of a master criminal/terroris is really just something Hollywood made up.

Yep. I remember reading a line years back along the lines of "typically, people don't turn to a life of crime because Bell Labs has a hiring freeze." I've recently discovered Brian Krebs' site (krebsonsecurity.com) and there are some fantastic examples. Like the thief/ves who incorrectly installed an "ATM skimming" device, so it came off in the hands of the first person who used the ATM... who drove off with it (as I understand it, the devices typically cost in the $2-5k range). Or the competing Russian pharma spammers who both tried to pay off corrupt officials to have the others arrested, essentially getting themselves into a bidding war.

Or the would-be suicide bomber in Russia, who used a cell phone for a detonator... and then had her bomb detonate early, because she forgot to turn the phone off and it received a spam SMS from the mobile carrier:

Or the owner of a bulletproof hosting company who threw a temper tantrum on a Spamhaus-related mailing list because his IP ranges had been listed... claiming that the Spamhaus report didn't have enough details, despite containing both the domains & the IPs. Then he proceeded to repeatedly claim that he'd taken down sites that were still up. Turns out the guy was ALSO notorious from having peddled "DDoS protection" services on IRC years earlier - which was basically a protection racket where anyone who didn't purchase the service would coincidentally suffer a DDoS shortly after. Some of the responses on the thread were beautiful, took me back to the good 'ol days of Usenet.